A critic provides a valuable service whether you realize it or not.
Critics *can* provide valuable services. They can also be annoying nuisances. It all depends on what they are criticizing and how.
Criticizing the LDP is probably a valuable service. Saying that *iBiblio* sucks when you are upset with the LDP is annoying. This is magnified when you consider the role that reputation plays in the open-source community; you are trashing one person's reputation *because you don't like something another person is doing*.
iBiblio provides an *incredibly* valuable service, and have for as long as I can remember --- sunsite was one of the best ftp sites around when i first got on the net. For you to bitch at them about something that *someone else* is doing is rude at best.
ln -s/usr/local/bin/quake2 something_in_your_path, and it isn't an issue.
it's *significantly* easier for system administrators if everything installs into well-known locations. and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of programmers haven't actually *tested* under custom installations, which is admittedly lame, but what can you do?
"Shouldn't you sue the people who wrote his operating system and FTP server?" And if someone sells drugs from their car, should we not confiscate the car, but instead sue the car manufacturer??
Ah, but by going after the guys who wrote Napster, they're *essentially* going after "the people who wrote his FTP server".
If it's absurd to go after one, it's absurd to go after the other.
I don't see anything to get our panties in a wad over, except maybe a group that thinks they can take over for the court system.
The point is that the constitution guarantees the freedom of speech, yet the courts seem to feel perfectly fine *prohibiting someone from mentioning in public that they are being sued*.
The merits of the lawsuit aren't the issue. The merits of the order prohibiting annoy.com from mentioning who was being harassed aren't the issue, either. Prohibiting them from saying that they were being sued is flat out *wrong* --- it violates not only free speech, but the very notion of a fair judicial system: you can be sued, and lose, and *never be able to tell anyone*?
And it's not just a matter of the harm done to annoy.com --- how can there *possibly* be public control of the judiciary, how can we hold judges accountable to the people for their performance, if we can't even find out what they are doing?
What "information wants to be free" was *originally* talking about was not the desire of individuals for information to be free; it was the economic reality that information, unlike land and most other forms of property, is not easily excludable.
It's easy to build a fence around land and not let people into it; that's in general not true of information. Worse yet, while only one person can possess a given physical good at a particular time, the same isn't true of information --- and your possession of fact [x] doesn't reduce the value of fact [x] *to me*. Also, transmission costs are low and getting lower.
It is thus *economically impossible* to prevent the free transfer of most forms of information, just as it's more or less economically impossible to prevent the sale of drugs --- you can outlaw it, but all you'll do is drive it underground and throw lots of people in jail.
(This is of course, a gross overgeneralization: it is possible in certain limited circumstances to devise mechanisms for exclusive information use, and what many of the current legal battles are really about is determining in which circumstances it is appropriate to do that. But *as a general rule*, information is not excludable, and "wants to be free").
Why, then, with geeks supposedly swimming in cash, is the EFF "underfunded"? I suspect that the "swimming in cash" is just part of the delusions of granduer that the geek community has.
I don't read it that way. "Swimming in cash" maybe the geek community isn't, but most programmers I know are overpaid for the difficulty of the work they do, and comfortably upper middle class. (No flames, please; I include myself in that category)
The problem, I suspect, is more of a cultural one: the vaguely libertarian culture that has grown up around the computer industry (or maybe I should say in which the industry has grown) *discourages* donations --- people think they earned their money and have no responsibility to a larger community, so why should they give away what they have earned?
It's *incredibly* frustrating.
It's all about intensity ....
on
Lawsuits Suck
·
· Score: 3
The article is probably the best i've seen with respect to what is going on in the intersection between the law and the net, but it misses two key points (which are actually probably related).
(1) The people who post in discussion fora such as these are a distinctly *different* group than the average web user. We (mostly) work on computers, and (again mostly) view the net as an essential part of our day-to-day lives. The average web user, however, is just looking for (a) information about some specific topic; (b) entertainment; (c) the ability to purchase things online rather than in a store. These people *don't care* about the theoretical arguments we're involved in. They don't understand the technical arguments, and they fail to see why the same rules that apply to the people already providing what they want from the net shouldn't apply to people on the net as well.
(b) Effective political action depends on the confluence of *three* things: the number of people who care about an issue, the intensity with which they care, and the amount of money they have to throw at the issue. The 'online community' is having problems with all three of those.
Take, for example, the deCSS case. The number of people who actually care *in either direction* is fairly small; most people outside of the two industries involved haven't even heard of it. For all that some advocates of free computing are really passionate about this issue, *in general*, the intensity with which the MPAA cares is much higher --- in their viewpoint, it's literally a life-or-death fight. Partly as a result of the lack of intensity, the MPAA is able to throw more money at the problem than the geeks are; it is almost inevitably going to win.
The same balance of forces exists in almost every part of the law where geeks are currently losing: the number of people who care is small, the other side cares more intensely, and the other side can throw more money at the problem.
In order to fix this *at the political level* (because the politicians can change the law, this is where the battle really needs to take place), at least two of those three need to change. But that's a difficult proposition *until the law accidentally steps on the toes of non-geeks*, for reasons explained under (1) above.
I think that eventually that will happen: the courts will issue a ruling which accidentally broadens the number of people who care and deepens the intensity with which they care. But *until* that happens, I doubt there's anything that can be done which will actually be effective in reshaping the law in ways that make more sense from the point of view of the technology crowd.
I voted for the Iron Giant, which is probably the best American animated film in decades. That said, I wasn't surprised that Galaxy Quest won -- the Hugos are, after all given by fans, and Galaxy Quest is all about poking fun at fan culture; it's the ultimate self-referential award.
OK, granted, the reason class-action suits *happen* is that the lawyers get money.
But there's a good reason for them to happen *economically* --- and it's largely to benefit the entity being sued, and the state.
Going to court is expensive --- each individual case has costs associated with it: hiring a lawyer, docket fees, etc. Allowing *each individual consumer of a product* to sue leads to enormous court costs --- not only does every consumer have to hire their own lawyer, etc., but the defendant company has to hire one for each case, and the court system has to hold all of the cases...
It is more efficient and cheaper, then, to have *one* case representing *all of the potential lawsuits*; if the goal of the system is economic efficiency, that's the way to go. (If the goal is justice, maybe not; but that's a different religious flame war...)
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob
It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are programs of study where this on-line textbook set is the *only* available textbook; usually college courses don't provide much choice where that is concerned.
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
It's reasonably well understood among economists that the market, left to its own devices, will undersupply certain goods and oversupply other goods as a result of externalities (public toilets are routinely undersupplied, and pollution is routinely oversupplied. the textbook examples are usually national defense, which would be undersupplied by the market, and loud noises, which are seriously oversupplied in urban areas). It's a legitimate concern that a result of marketizing information *might* be an undersupply. I think it's premature to determine that, but it's a legitimate issue.
How does ANY person of limited means learn ANYTHING?
When you hear politicians babbling about "the digital divide" in a way that makes no sense and seems free of context, this is *really* what they're getting at.
What's happening here is that computer technology is providing a mechanism whereby information can be priced --- allowing market mechanisms into an area which previously didn't function as a market. Just as happened when barbed wire allowed the fencing off and marketizing of large tracts of land in the American west (and, before that, when enclosures allowed the marketization of tracts of land in England), there is something of a gold rush mentality --- speculative grabbing, basically.
This is in its infancy, and it's still possible to find technological fixes to prevent it. But the *trend* is clear --- information and knowledge are going to be marketized.
Certain economists argue that this is a *good* thing because it will allow the efficiency of the market to distribute information more... uh... efficiently. The counter-argument is that information, in a sense, has been one of the few great equalizers of modern society --- it's more or less free for the taking to anyone who wants it. Is that going to change?
My bet is that as information is marketized there will be counter-forces which arise in reaction to its side effects, much as the public library movement arose in the late 19th century. That still won't be *ideal*, but...
AOL granted their programmers (Nullsoft) the access to publish on the web any new tool that was created, and didn't require that Nullsoft's tools be approved by AOL. When they found out what Nullsoft had done, they shut it down, but they should have known what it was before publishing it.
This is a pretty disturbing argument, in terms of its implications, tho. Imagine that an employer allows its employees to put up web pages over which they (the employee) have complete content control, and stipulate that that content is to be generated not on work machines during work time.
MP3Board's argument, as explained in your post, is that the employer is, in that case *still legally responsible*. IOW --- if you don't keep your employees muzzled, we will punish you for it.
This is yet another dark shadow on the wall of the net. Our economy doesn't actually seem to believe in free flow of ideas any more, if it ever did.
I will not vote for that green monkey. Harry Browne is the only one who would change the system for the better. I refuse to live in a socialist regime.
This is a good part of the reason why third party movements fail: even if the people who don't like the current system and have enough passion to do something about it amount to 15% of the population, we are so hopelessly fragmented into different groups that refuse to come together for the purpose of pursuing the areas that we share in common that we fracture our support and each end up getting 1-2% of the vote. The circus in Long Beach was a good example of that --- why fight with the enemy when you can fight with yourself?
Still, I think we should be magnanimous enough to offer Microsoft a compliment on the effectiveness and general quality of fdisk - I recommend it to all of my friends
Except, even there, users of MS products get an inferior product: the OS/2 fdisk was significantly more powerful and flexible.
code is almost always indented "correctly" according to what the programmer intended
In practice, I find that most incorrect indentation (on a multiple-person project with significant quantities of legacy code) is the result of different people using different editors that have different default indentations.
Au contraire - by the friendly people and breweries of the Czech city Budweisz, who understandably object to a US company selling some obscure horsepiss under their well known name.
Precisely --- the legal issue is that the breweries in Ceske Budjovice (Budweis, in German) have the rights to the Budweiser trademark, as it applies to beer. The Czech government and the Budvar breweries have been engaged in legal battles with Anheuser-Busch for years, and at one point the Czech government had to quash an attempt by Anheuser-Busch to buy the Budvar breweries.
The *original* cause of the problem is that after WWI, the companies located in the defeated powers lost their trademark rights under US law --- there was a similar case between Bayer Co in the US and Bayer AG which ended when Bayer AG bought out Bayer Co.
No, I'm *not* saying that. What i'm saying is that it's a two-edged street --- there are people who have problems, and there are people who don't, and making broad generalizations about drugs turning people into mindless drones doesn't help the debate *at all*.
I'll also admit that I tend to take the rhetoric in the drug war debate fairly personally --- I feel like i'm being told, over and over again, that it would be better for society if I were in jail.
Transfer more money over to the private sector where businesses are reeling in the significant drop in employee productivity as we deal with a national drug addiction.
I'm a reasonably productive software engineer for a major corporation, as are most of my friends. Many people in my social circle, including me, are regular pot smokers, and occasionally indulge in... other... susbtances, usually hallucinogens.
My employer hasn't been complaining about massive drops in productivity recently, nor have my friends' employers. In my case, because my use of drugs *increases* when my general morale is better, i tend to be *more* productive when i'm using --- because both increased use and increased productivity are side-effects of morale improvement.
More importantly, the guy is way ahead of all the other third party candidates, is on the ballot in 30 states already (including Montana:-)
Nitpick: whoever the reform party candidate is --- either Buchanan or Hagelin, we'll find out this week --- will be on the ballot in all fifty, and get matching funds, as well.
On these same types of construction jobs in the US it is rare to see illegal labor. The benefits are slim--because the government doesn't make employment artificially costly to the employer. The risks are great.
It's pretty common in California for contractors to pick up day laborers who are hanging out on well-known street corners; nobody *ever* inquires as to the legality of such workers, and they are paid under the table.
Slashdot Mirror
A critic provides a valuable service whether you realize it or not.
Critics *can* provide valuable services. They can also be annoying nuisances. It all depends on what they are criticizing and how.
Criticizing the LDP is probably a valuable service. Saying that *iBiblio* sucks when you are upset with the LDP is annoying. This is magnified when you consider the role that reputation plays in the open-source community; you are trashing one person's reputation *because you don't like something another person is doing*.
iBiblio provides an *incredibly* valuable service, and have for as long as I can remember --- sunsite was one of the best ftp sites around when i first got on the net. For you to bitch at them about something that *someone else* is doing is rude at best.
Ah, but you can just do
/usr/local/bin/quake2 something_in_your_path, and it isn't an issue.
ln -s
it's *significantly* easier for system administrators if everything installs into well-known locations. and it wouldn't surprise me if a lot of programmers haven't actually *tested* under custom installations, which is admittedly lame, but what can you do?
"Shouldn't you sue the people who wrote his operating system and FTP server?" And if someone sells drugs from their car, should we not confiscate the car, but instead sue the car manufacturer??
Ah, but by going after the guys who wrote Napster, they're *essentially* going after "the people who wrote his FTP server".
If it's absurd to go after one, it's absurd to go after the other.
while "evil" Prince (later King) John was probably one of the better ones--he also signed the Magna Carta, albeit at spear point.
Signing the magna carta at spearpoint means he was a good king?
I don't see anything to get our panties in a wad over, except maybe a group that thinks they can take over for the court system.
The point is that the constitution guarantees the freedom of speech, yet the courts seem to feel perfectly fine *prohibiting someone from mentioning in public that they are being sued*.
The merits of the lawsuit aren't the issue. The merits of the order prohibiting annoy.com from mentioning who was being harassed aren't the issue, either. Prohibiting them from saying that they were being sued is flat out *wrong* --- it violates not only free speech, but the very notion of a fair judicial system: you can be sued, and lose, and *never be able to tell anyone*?
And it's not just a matter of the harm done to annoy.com --- how can there *possibly* be public control of the judiciary, how can we hold judges accountable to the people for their performance, if we can't even find out what they are doing?
He missed the point of the saying.
What "information wants to be free" was *originally* talking about was not the desire of individuals for information to be free; it was the economic reality that information, unlike land and most other forms of property, is not easily excludable.
It's easy to build a fence around land and not let people into it; that's in general not true of information. Worse yet, while only one person can possess a given physical good at a particular time, the same isn't true of information --- and your possession of fact [x] doesn't reduce the value of fact [x] *to me*. Also, transmission costs are low and getting lower.
It is thus *economically impossible* to prevent the free transfer of most forms of information, just as it's more or less economically impossible to prevent the sale of drugs --- you can outlaw it, but all you'll do is drive it underground and throw lots of people in jail.
(This is of course, a gross overgeneralization: it is possible in certain limited circumstances to devise mechanisms for exclusive information use, and what many of the current legal battles are really about is determining in which circumstances it is appropriate to do that. But *as a general rule*, information is not excludable, and "wants to be free").
Why, then, with geeks supposedly swimming in cash, is the EFF "underfunded"? I suspect that the "swimming in cash" is just part of the delusions of granduer that the geek community has.
I don't read it that way. "Swimming in cash" maybe the geek community isn't, but most programmers I know are overpaid for the difficulty of the work they do, and comfortably upper middle class. (No flames, please; I include myself in that category)
The problem, I suspect, is more of a cultural one: the vaguely libertarian culture that has grown up around the computer industry (or maybe I should say in which the industry has grown) *discourages* donations --- people think they earned their money and have no responsibility to a larger community, so why should they give away what they have earned?
It's *incredibly* frustrating.
The article is probably the best i've seen with respect to what is going on in the intersection between the law and the net, but it misses two key points (which are actually probably related).
(1) The people who post in discussion fora such as these are a distinctly *different* group than the average web user. We (mostly) work on computers, and (again mostly) view the net as an essential part of our day-to-day lives. The average web user, however, is just looking for (a) information about some specific topic; (b) entertainment; (c) the ability to purchase things online rather than in a store. These people *don't care* about the theoretical arguments we're involved in. They don't understand the technical arguments, and they fail to see why the same rules that apply to the people already providing what they want from the net shouldn't apply to people on the net as well.
(b) Effective political action depends on the confluence of *three* things: the number of people who care about an issue, the intensity with which they care, and the amount of money they have to throw at the issue. The 'online community' is having problems with all three of those.
Take, for example, the deCSS case. The number of people who actually care *in either direction* is fairly small; most people outside of the two industries involved haven't even heard of it. For all that some advocates of free computing are really passionate about this issue, *in general*, the intensity with which the MPAA cares is much higher --- in their viewpoint, it's literally a life-or-death fight. Partly as a result of the lack of intensity, the MPAA is able to throw more money at the problem than the geeks are; it is almost inevitably going to win.
The same balance of forces exists in almost every part of the law where geeks are currently losing: the number of people who care is small, the other side cares more intensely, and the other side can throw more money at the problem.
In order to fix this *at the political level* (because the politicians can change the law, this is where the battle really needs to take place), at least two of those three need to change. But that's a difficult proposition *until the law accidentally steps on the toes of non-geeks*, for reasons explained under (1) above.
I think that eventually that will happen: the courts will issue a ruling which accidentally broadens the number of people who care and deepens the intensity with which they care. But *until* that happens, I doubt there's anything that can be done which will actually be effective in reshaping the law in ways that make more sense from the point of view of the technology crowd.
I voted for the Iron Giant, which is probably the best American animated film in decades. That said, I wasn't surprised that Galaxy Quest won -- the Hugos are, after all given by fans, and Galaxy Quest is all about poking fun at fan culture; it's the ultimate self-referential award.
OK, granted, the reason class-action suits *happen* is that the lawyers get money.
...
...)
But there's a good reason for them to happen *economically* --- and it's largely to benefit the entity being sued, and the state.
Going to court is expensive --- each individual case has costs associated with it: hiring a lawyer, docket fees, etc. Allowing *each individual consumer of a product* to sue leads to enormous court costs --- not only does every consumer have to hire their own lawyer, etc., but the defendant company has to hire one for each case, and the court system has to hold all of the cases
It is more efficient and cheaper, then, to have *one* case representing *all of the potential lawsuits*; if the goal of the system is economic efficiency, that's the way to go. (If the goal is justice, maybe not; but that's a different religious flame war
Granted, if any attempt is made to force such textbooks on people, I'd be in the front rows of the lynching mob
It wouldn't surprise me at all if there are programs of study where this on-line textbook set is the *only* available textbook; usually college courses don't provide much choice where that is concerned.
It's funny how all the pseudo-libertarians around here are unwilling to let the market decide...
It's reasonably well understood among economists that the market, left to its own devices, will undersupply certain goods and oversupply other goods as a result of externalities (public toilets are routinely undersupplied, and pollution is routinely oversupplied. the textbook examples are usually national defense, which would be undersupplied by the market, and loud noises, which are seriously oversupplied in urban areas). It's a legitimate concern that a result of marketizing information *might* be an undersupply. I think it's premature to determine that, but it's a legitimate issue.
How does ANY person of limited means learn ANYTHING?
... uh ... efficiently. The counter-argument is that information, in a sense, has been one of the few great equalizers of modern society --- it's more or less free for the taking to anyone who wants it. Is that going to change?
...
When you hear politicians babbling about "the digital divide" in a way that makes no sense and seems free of context, this is *really* what they're getting at.
What's happening here is that computer technology is providing a mechanism whereby information can be priced --- allowing market mechanisms into an area which previously didn't function as a market. Just as happened when barbed wire allowed the fencing off and marketizing of large tracts of land in the American west (and, before that, when enclosures allowed the marketization of tracts of land in England), there is something of a gold rush mentality --- speculative grabbing, basically.
This is in its infancy, and it's still possible to find technological fixes to prevent it. But the *trend* is clear --- information and knowledge are going to be marketized.
Certain economists argue that this is a *good* thing because it will allow the efficiency of the market to distribute information more
My bet is that as information is marketized there will be counter-forces which arise in reaction to its side effects, much as the public library movement arose in the late 19th century. That still won't be *ideal*, but
AOL granted their programmers (Nullsoft) the access to publish on the web any new tool that was created, and didn't require that Nullsoft's tools be approved by AOL. When they found out what Nullsoft had done, they shut it down, but they should have known what it was before publishing it.
This is a pretty disturbing argument, in terms of its implications, tho. Imagine that an employer allows its employees to put up web pages over which they (the employee) have complete content control, and stipulate that that content is to be generated not on work machines during work time.
MP3Board's argument, as explained in your post, is that the employer is, in that case *still legally responsible*. IOW --- if you don't keep your employees muzzled, we will punish you for it.
This is yet another dark shadow on the wall of the net. Our economy doesn't actually seem to believe in free flow of ideas any more, if it ever did.
Hagelin was interesting until he picked his VP candidate.
/. would willingly vote for the founder of *CyberGold Promotions*.
I cannot believe that anyone reading
I will not vote for that green monkey. Harry Browne is the only one who would change the system for the better. I refuse to live in a socialist regime.
This is a good part of the reason why third party movements fail: even if the people who don't like the current system and have enough passion to do something about it amount to 15% of the population, we are so hopelessly fragmented into different groups that refuse to come together for the purpose of pursuing the areas that we share in common that we fracture our support and each end up getting 1-2% of the vote. The circus in Long Beach was a good example of that --- why fight with the enemy when you can fight with yourself?
Still, I think we should be magnanimous enough to offer Microsoft a compliment on the effectiveness and general quality of fdisk - I recommend it to all of my friends
Except, even there, users of MS products get an inferior product: the OS/2 fdisk was significantly more powerful and flexible.
code is almost always indented "correctly" according to what the programmer intended
In practice, I find that most incorrect indentation (on a multiple-person project with significant quantities of legacy code) is the result of different people using different editors that have different default indentations.
Au contraire - by the friendly people and breweries of the Czech city Budweisz, who understandably object to a US company selling some obscure horsepiss under their well known name.
Precisely --- the legal issue is that the breweries in Ceske Budjovice (Budweis, in German) have the rights to the Budweiser trademark, as it applies to beer. The Czech government and the Budvar breweries have been engaged in legal battles with Anheuser-Busch for years, and at one point the Czech government had to quash an attempt by Anheuser-Busch to buy the Budvar breweries.
The *original* cause of the problem is that after WWI, the companies located in the defeated powers lost their trademark rights under US law --- there was a similar case between Bayer Co in the US and Bayer AG which ended when Bayer AG bought out Bayer Co.
Are you saying that, based on your experience
No, I'm *not* saying that. What i'm saying is that it's a two-edged street --- there are people who have problems, and there are people who don't, and making broad generalizations about drugs turning people into mindless drones doesn't help the debate *at all*.
I'll also admit that I tend to take the rhetoric in the drug war debate fairly personally --- I feel like i'm being told, over and over again, that it would be better for society if I were in jail.
Transfer more money over to the private sector where businesses are reeling in the significant drop in employee productivity as we deal with a national drug addiction.
... other ... susbtances, usually hallucinogens.
I'm a reasonably productive software engineer for a major corporation, as are most of my friends. Many people in my social circle, including me, are regular pot smokers, and occasionally indulge in
My employer hasn't been complaining about massive drops in productivity recently, nor have my friends' employers. In my case, because my use of drugs *increases* when my general morale is better, i tend to be *more* productive when i'm using --- because both increased use and increased productivity are side-effects of morale improvement.
More importantly, the guy is way ahead of all the other third party candidates, is on the ballot in 30 states already (including Montana :-)
Nitpick: whoever the reform party candidate is --- either Buchanan or Hagelin, we'll find out this week --- will be on the ballot in all fifty, and get matching funds, as well.
Why did everybody I talked to prefer McCain and Bradley,
...
Pretty good sign that you're exposed to a selected subset of the nation's population.
I voted for McCain, for what it's worth
Making gas bombs can be a misdemeanor
OK, granted. The real problem is that someone is setting bail for *a misdemeanor offense* at either $500K or $1 million.
That strikes me as violating the constitutional provision regarding excessive fines or bail.
On these same types of construction jobs in the US it is rare to see illegal labor. The benefits are slim--because the government doesn't make employment artificially costly to the employer. The risks are great.
It's pretty common in California for contractors to pick up day laborers who are hanging out on well-known street corners; nobody *ever* inquires as to the legality of such workers, and they are paid under the table.
understandable. but when in rome ...